Ed. note: The following are excerpts from articles written by Benfield
in 1986.

One reason why Carlisle's population density
remains relatively low is because the town contains so much ledge and
swamp. Thanks in part to these
physiographical features, particularly the ledge, we have no municipal
water supply and no town sewerage. Almost every house in Carlisle has its
own well and its own septic system.
This means that people cannot live too close together without affecting
each other's ground water, as residents of Carlisle's center know only too
well. Carlisle's abundant
ledge would make the installation of a municipal water supply, and
especially town sewerage, fabulously costly.

Carlisle's swampland has also helped retard its
growth in population, partly for reasons of sanitation and partly because
of the abundance of mosquitoes. When
these insects bite newcomers it sometimes encourages them to go back to
where they came from, which has a favorable effect on our tax rate, by
delaying the need to
build expensive new schools and expand other municipal services. Black
flies, despite the shortness of their season, help a bit too.

We were lucky to succeed. Not long before the Town
Meeting of 28 November 1972 when the town voted 243 yes to 21 no in favor
of the acquisition, conditional
on the town receiving 75 percent reimbursement, I organized a public foot
tour of the land including a walk along the riverside frontage. This was to
show how it connected
with the property of the Great Meadows National Wildlife Refuge and,
further south, the town's recently acquired Foss Farm acreage.
Unfortunately I did not realize how
much the Concord River's level had recently risen. As a result, members of
the public who were kind enough to turn out for this expedition, waded up
to their knees in water
until we decided we had better retreat to Maple Street, trespassing across
the late Francis T. O'Rourke's pig farm, whose existence, abutting the
Greenough land, was
something we did not plan to publicize!